Someone Else's Dream
by Kurukami
Summary: A decidedly weird, breaking-the-fourth-wall take on River’s dreams... specifically, while she was in cryo.


Written for the fffriday fic challenge redux, harkening back to challenge #22, "Dreams".

**Challenge the Twenty-Second: "Dreams"  
Title:** "Someone Else's Dream"  
**Word Count:** 913  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** A decidedly weird, breaking-the-fourth-wall take on River's dreams.  
**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon created Firefly and Mutant Enemy owns it. I'm just an itinerant penner of words and sentences. Don't sue me, I'm broke enough as it is...

**Author's Note:** This is actually adapted from the very beginning of another, multi-part fic that I'm working on. Nonetheless, it seemed perfect for showing River's dreams of what might have been.

* * *

"_You know those nights, when you're sleeping, and it's totally dark and absolutely silent, and  
you don't dream, and there's only blackness? And this is the reason… it's because on those  
nights, you've gone away. On those nights, you're in someone else's dream…"  
- Laurie Anderson, "Someone Else's Dream"_

They told River she wouldn't dream, but she did.

It was like floating in the depths of a lightless ocean, all alone in that cool blackness, and images and sensation flowed into and through her. Shattered flashes of home, glimpses of strange starships and worlds she's never seen, of faces forgotten and familiar, all mixed together like the shards of half a dozen vases left broken on a hardwood floor. Surges of experiences and tests and trials she'd known in her childhood or at the Academy, combined with visions of things she knew had never happened to her. There are so many dreams, all chaotically jumbled inside her head.

She dreams of whispers of wood and dust and death, spoken by a dreadlocked dusky-skinned girl with face painted bone-white who stares at her across a bonfire, of images of monsters and horrors and _things_ she can't put name to that belong in some horror-vid fresh from the Cortex. Of how to scythe a wheel kick in a vicious arc that'll break an opponent's jaw, of the soft velvety texture of a worn leather weapon-grip, of the intimate certainty of how much pressure has to be applied at a particular point on the wrist to fracture the ulna and strip a blade from an enemy's hand.

She dreams of intimately caressing others, bringing them trembling to the brink of ecstasy and beyond, of being trained in ceremony and technique, of standing at a magnificent ball in an elegant gown. She dreams of plots and machinations, of a handsome man with a scar on his cheek whose face is twisted by rage and a need for vengeance.

She dreams of children's toys talking and moving about like they were people, consumed in their own petty rivalries and jealousies before uniting in their efforts to rejoin the one who owns them.

She dreams of being trapped in a ditch in the earth alongside others, clutching a rifle to her chest as though it could bring the warmth that the long, worn, coffee-shade coat she wears doesn't. She knows that death streaks past her in tiny lead packages just overhead, but that she must tempt that fate if she wants a chance to win her freedom.

She dreams of a challenge on a world she's never known, of ghosting into a ultra-secure complex like a shadowy wraith, knowing what she needs to find and that the lives of others depend on her finding it, burning with anger that she has been forced to this by one she thought she could trust.

She dreams of being named for the months furthest from winter, instead of being named for water.

And always, there are the voices. Talking, cajoling, expecting, wanting her to speak thus or stand there or wait until the others are ready. They never stop, confusing, insistent, turning her this way and that as she reads the same words over and over again until –

The light strikes her eyes like a physical blow, and she convulses upward with a shriek. The man who is standing not three feet away flinches backwards as though scalded by boiling water. Cryo vapors flow away from her, spilling out of the padded womb she'd slept in like milk spreading in water. The man quickly steps back from the cryo unit as River scrabbles her way clear of the box with half-numb limbs and sprawls naked on the cold, dusty metal floor. Everything is harsh and sharp-edged and every inch of her body itches incessantly with pins-and-needles agony as flesh long deprived of blood and oxygen reassures itself it's still alive. The voices hush for just an instant, as though as shocked by the newness of all this as she is, but then…

"River? River, it's OK, it's OK, I'm here…"

She begins to cry, knowing that things will never be so blessedly silent again even as she dimly recognizes her brother's voice. "Simon?"

He touches her cheek, stares reassuringly into her eyes, but she can't be calm, she has to explain, has to tell him what's happening before it all fades from her mind like mist before the morning's sunlight. "Simon… they talk to me, they want me to… to talk…"

She can't go on, the voices are back inside her head, quieter now but still present, muttering, telling her things she doesn't want to know, _can't_ know, and the tears spill down her cheeks anew. She tries to remember this moment, the certainty that she understood what was going on, but the comprehension vanishes like a soap bubble falling to earth, and all she is left with are fragments of the knowledge she so briefly possessed.

What cruel deity could have done this to her? Is it some bloodied savior, nailed to a piece of wood, staring down at her in judgement for her alleged sins? Is it some heartless spirit, demanding that she accomplish monumental, impossible tasks before she can find peace again? Or is it some manipulative joss idol, hidden away inside a distant temple and watching with interest as she dances to his directions?

The understanding slips away from her, and she is left with only the voices.


End file.
